Share This Story!

The blaze broke out at Grenfell Tower, a social housing apartment block in one of the United Kingdom’s wealthiest neighborhoods on June 14, 2017. The victims ranged in age from an 84-year-old great-grandmother to a stillborn baby.

LONDON — An independent inquiry into a devastating fire at a high rise in London that killed 72 people began hearing evidence Tuesday, seeking to answer the question of why the tragedy occurred and prevent a similar disaster from happening again.

The blaze broke out at Grenfell Tower, a social housing apartment block in Kensington and Chelsea — one of the United Kingdom’s wealthiest neighborhoods — on the night of June 14, 2017. It started with a faulty refrigerator in one apartment before tearing through the block. The victims ranged in age from an 84-year-old great-grandmother to a stillborn baby.

“The fundamental question which lies at the heart of our work is how, in London, in 2017, a domestic fire developed so quickly and so catastrophically that an entire high-rise block was engulfed,” said Richard Millett, chief counsel to the inquiry, at the hearing Monday.

“And how it was that 71 people lost their lives in a matter of hours, leaving families and friends in shock, grief and bewilderment.”

A 72nd victim died in January.

Millett said survivors and relatives were left with “an abiding sense of injustice, betrayal and marginalization, leading to an overwhelming question: Why?”

The inquiry is expected to last about 18 months. Phase one began last month with two weeks of tributes to the victims. The inquiry, one of the largest ever held in the United Kingdom, has more than 500 “core participants,” including survivors of the blaze and bereaved relatives and friends.

"In terms of loss of life the fire was the single greatest tragedy to befall this city since the end of the Second World War,” inquiry chairman Martin Moore-Bick, a retired judge, said at its opening last month.

"The sight of the building engulfed in flame is indelibly printed on the memories of those who experienced an event of unimaginable horror,” he added.

He told the survivors that “my team and I are determined to provide the answers that you seek.”

The blaze cause a furor over whether neglect of the building, home to mainly working class and multi-ethnic tenants, by Kensington and Chelsea Council — the local authority that ran the building — contributed to the deaths.

A report published Monday that was commissioned by the inquiry said a refurbishment on the building that included installing flammable cladding a year before the fire created “multiple catastrophic fire-spread routes.”

The report, by fire safety engineer Barbara Lane, found fire safety breaches including fire doors that only resisted the blaze for 20 minutes rather than 60 and said the aluminum-and polyethylene cladding, which emitted toxic smoke that slowed down firefighters, was “substantially to blame for the tragedy.”

She said advice for residents to stay put in their apartments had "effectively failed."

Kensington and Chelsea Council added the cladding in the 1970s-built high-rise as part of an $11 million refurbishment to make the public housing project look better in the wealthy neighborhood.

Grenfell residents had approved using fire-resistant zinc cladding, but aluminum panels were used instead, saving the Kensington and Chelsea Council $378,000, the Guardian reported.